Some mentoring programs are successful, while others languish. In seeking to work out why, Judith Lindenberger presents the view that the success or failure of a mentoring program rollout is related to building capacity and linking the program to continuous learning. Based on her experience of developing a mentoring program for Brown-Forman Corporation, Lindenberger outlines twenty questions to use as a mentoring program checklist.
While a mentor program is one of your people development initiatives least likely to respond to a ‘laundry list’ methodology, Lindenberger’s ‘twenty questions’ is valuable in that it approaches a mentoring program from a people centric, project managed, and risk averse starting point. Mentoring programs need to be clearly linked to business drivers, and to be integrated with existing capabilities and corporate culture:
- What are our business reasons for developing a mentoring program?
- What organisational support exists and what needs to be developed?
- What are our criteria for success?
- Who needs to be involved in developing our program?
- Who’s going to manage, coordinate, and oversee the program?
- Who else needs to be consulted? What other information do we need?
- What mentoring is already in place?
- How will we communicate to employees about the mentoring program?
- How quickly do we want to roll out our program?
- How will we pair mentors and protégés?
- How will we motivate our employees to participate?
- Why would a mentor say no?
- Are there pairings we should avoid?
- What tips and guidance should we give mentoring partners?
- What ongoing support should we make available to mentoring partners?
- How often should we ask mentoring partners to meet?
- What should we do to support long-distance mentoring?
- How many mentors should we encourage employees to have?
- What mechanisms can be used to improve the program continuously?
- What pitfalls do we need to avoid?